Catering to Our Demographic: Adult Swim's Fat Guy Stuck in Internet

This tech blogging gig isn't all it's cracked up to be. Some days I think we ought to get medals just for rolling out of bed in the morning. Take yesterday, for instance--after working a full day, I had to head all the way down to 23rd Street to drink beer, eat pizza, and screen episodes from an upcoming Adult Swim series in the lobby of The Fader magazine. Honestly, this is the sort of thing the ancient Greeks used to write epic poems about.
The show's called Fat Guy Stuck in Internet--somehow the folks at Cartoon Network thought there might be some overlap in interest with our readership. We screened three episodes of the series. The first/pilot episode had premiered a year or so ago, vying for a spot on Cartoon Network's coveted late night Adult Swim block. To be perfectly honest, I was rooting for our buddy Tony Millionaire's Drinky Crow Show to win, since I've been a fan of his comics work for year.
Nothing personal, of course, and if I did need that extra push into the Fat Guy camp, it came last night--a slice of cheese pizza and a few cans of Coors Light certainly helped the show's case. But let's face it, that's sort of the reason Adult Swim exists, catering to folks who are searching for something to watch on a basic-cable cartoon station at midnight after splitting a cardboard box full of grease and a six-pack or two of cheap beer. Keep that in mind when judging the show that its debut time slot is Monday, 12:15 AM--also that its lead-in show is Metalocalypse, Brendon Small's sadistically hilarious tale of "the world's most brutal band."
In many ways, Fat Guy is a 180 from its lead-in. First, it's a live-action program. I spoke with one of the show's stars, Curtis Gwinn, before the screening, and he noted that the inclusion of such programs is still something of a hot-button issue among Adult Swim's most vocal (and message-boardy) fans.
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim helped open the floodgates when their mostly animated show, Tom Goes to the Mayor, ended, giving way to the almost entirely live-action Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. That said, given the hardworking hilarity of Fat Guy, the show will almost certainly win over fans, even as they grind their teeth through each episode's 11 minute runtime.
Before screening the episodes, Gwinn, co-actor John Gemberling, and director Ryan McFaul gave an overly complicated explanation synopsis of the first episode. Here's what you need to know: There's a fat guy. He gets sucked into and subsequently stuck in the Internet. The Internet kind of looks like Tron. Oh, and he may be the messiah.
It's a little bit Star Wars, a little bit Lord of the Rings, with every imaginable movie reference tossed in for good measure--including Repo Man, Teen Wolf, and Dirty Dancing. All this is tempered with ungodly amounts of comedic absurdity, which is rarely found outside the United Kingdom. One episode reminded me of the BBC cult hit The Mighty Boosh--which was fitting, as the next one featured Boosh's Rich Fulcher. ("We flew him in from England for that," Gwinn said, when I asked if that was Boosh's Bob Fossil on the screen. "Turner wasn't happy.") It's an orgy of nerdy in-jokes and Mystery Science Theater-level special effects.
The show premiers next month as part of Adult Swim's new schedule. Back to top

Brian Heater has worked at a number of tech pubs, including Engadget, Laptop, and PCMag (where he served as Senior Editor). Most recently, he was as the Managing Editor of TechTimes.com. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Lucy.
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